Needing Simple CRM for maybe couple people down the road. Just going to put small amount of leads from something like Hoover’s to start to start process of marketing campaign. Really like the aspect of scoring emails for if they were opened, showed interest, etc., and the system tracks their activities for me.

….Which recommendations are there besides Zoho? My needs are way to simple than something I’d be spending ALL my time configuring. I’ve also heard that Zoho has a large learning curve?

The program closest to what you’re describing is Contactually, which goes really strong into email automation and lead scoring.

All the major CRMs also have email tracking, including Insightly, Zoho, Pipedrive and Prosperworks, but lead scoring is not automatic. You’ll have to manually rate leads based on their responses, or add an extension/integration (there are several available).

So it probably comes down to a question of budget. If you can tolerate a manual system, you might be able to get by with the free version of Insightly. Otherwise it will likely cost around $30/month (per user) for a CRM + lead scoring system.

I’ve been using zoho and it’s good. I haven’t used 100 other CRMs so I can’t compare but zoho is easy for me. We used the cheap plan and now we have the expensive plan. As a sales person I don’t really see the difference but the admin of the system said the expensive one is worth it b/c we save a lot of time with the automation we use for inbound lead filtering and emailing.

I used HubSpot for a year or so and it was okay but not configurable enough. This past spring, I switched to Salesforce, which offers a new low-cost Essentials edition that’s pretty good for me for now. It provides both sales and service support and I feel I’ll be able to grow into a more sophisticated edition in a year or two.

If you are working with startups, a new CRM worth checking out is called Affinity. It connects with CrunchBase and is purpose-built for people working in VC and with startups. The User experience is very good and syncs seamlessly with email.

Hey!
Try Nimble.com. It’s a CRM for smaller buisnesses and teams that is very social. What that means is the program lets you see social and email in the sam stream. It also builds out people profiles for you so that you don’t have to manually enter info each time. For a young company, one of the best ways to use it is to add the Chrome widget to build profiles of people you read about and want to contact on the fly. Once you put them into Nimble, you can queue them up for a call in two clicks. Super easy and fast.
I’m a big fan and I have tried a bunch of other CRMs.
Best,
Mike

After tackling the exact same question for a decade+ I STILL don’t have the perfect answer. But I have some that are “very good”.

For auto lead scoring, notification of opens, downloads, and visits to your website I heartily recommend Hatchbuck. I has among the best of all automated marketing campaign tools, fantastic logic tools that automatically shift prospects to different campaigns based on their actions, send them auto emails, notify their salesperson, etc. Really. Can’t. Be. Beat. (Ok Hubspot and Marketo have such things but at a Ferrari price point. Hatchbuck is more like a Subaru WRX, but with nicer interior.

The one thing it doesn’t do particularly well is support click-to-call for your customers. (The mobile version does, but it’s clunky). For that, and a host of other reasons like customized workflow, great reminders, etc., I recommend NUtshell. Great, great tool.

If you are a little more adventurous I’d look into Salesflare, too. An Up and Comer, if I ever saw one.

For me the best CRM will always be Salesforce, with each update they are improving the tools making better the use of them. It has always allowed me to share everything related to the marketing of my company without any inconvenience and my clients have benefited a lot from this change of information.

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